‘Private benefit’ versus ‘public good’

See update for October 18, 2022, at end of post.

Previous coverage that I’ve seen of a plan to merge six universities in Pennsylvania has emphasized the administrative side^[1] and I honestly don’t see the value of fragmented systems, particularly with libraries, which are on their own trying to afford peer-reviewed journal subscriptions.^[2]

I have little sympathy for administrators. Their work may be necessary, managing the nuts and bolts of a functioning university, but they are honored and paid much too much. More of that money needs to be going into research and education. More of that honor should be bestowed on researchers who give us something to teach.

The trouble is that it isn’t just a merger that’s happening at the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE). Professors are getting laid off. And administration is adding insult to injury:^[3]

I’m really tired of witnessing the chancellor and upper management referring to my husband [Eddie Severn] as being — and I’m quoting — ‘Excess teaching capacity, part of a headcount reduction and a faculty member needing to be shed to right size the university and the PASSHE system.’^[4]

There are a couple of issues here. First, what we’re seeing is that previously-and-still-relatively-privileged professors are receiving the treatment that other workers have faced since the 1970s. They aren’t reacting well and no one should be expected to.

But second, the budget cuts that PASSHE faces^[5] are a part of a much larger picture. I saw the same thing happening in California, particularly with the California State University system (I earned my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from CSU East Bay in Hayward), where the state legislature is considerably less anti-intellectual. We have, as a society, decided that education is a private benefit, strictly oriented to individual career success, rather than a public good, preparing an educated citizenry capable of intelligently addressing the issues of the day^[6] and of contributing to our culture.

It’s too easy, much too easy, to look at Eddie Severn, whose wife spoke out against the PASSHE cuts in the above quotation, as “just” a music teacher. “He taught classes such as jazz and brass ensemble conducting and has expertise in such areas as trumpet and jazz performance, jazz theory and ear training.”^[7]

In this, we have pitted the ‘private benefit’ against the public good and used that alleged private benefit, both 1) to rationalize increased emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); and 2) to devalue the public good, defunding the social sciences and the humanities.

Yes, in a capitalist society, people need to be able to earn a living. And I do not mean to devalue STEM; I type this into a computer, my cell phone is close at hand, and I have a new car with the latest safety technology on order. But as we have dived headlong in this direction, the problems that the social sciences are meant to address have grown worse, in part because to solve those problems would go against elite interests.^[8] And as we lay Severn off, we have lost a bit of what it is to be human.

Update, October 18, 2022: Ellen Schrecker explains that the root of academia’s difficulties lies in the anti-war and liberation movement protests of the 1960s and early 1970s, provoking a backlash that has lasted into the present day. This backlash is an unsubtle attack on academic freedom.^[9]

For the next 50 years [following the 1970s], higher education confronted a toxic combination of reduced public funding and diminished public legitimacy. American politics had turned to the right. Threatened by the social movements of the 1960s as well as by the economic crises of the 1970s, political elites abandoned the liberalism of the New Deal and Great Society and instead embraced the free market. By the 1980s, an increasingly conservative political culture prioritized personal success over the common good.

Higher education came to be seen primarily as a vehicle for individual economic mobility. And as the academy’s demographic make-up changed, public sentiment turned against devoting resources to help individuals who should be helping themselves — especially if those individuals were no longer white men. Instead of making a case for a more democratic system that would offer all qualified applicants access to a high-quality system of universal higher education, the academy’s leaders adopted the individualistic mantra of neoliberalism.^[10]

This is something I’ve written about previously.^[11] And if you want to know why I condemn neoliberalism so vociferously, why I take neoliberalism so personally, why I think neoliberalism is at least partly responsible for my job situation, consider that even if I had somehow overcome the calamity of the academic job market,^[12] if I had somehow overcome the difficulty of holding a Ph.D. in a now-dead field (human science), if I had overcome the difficulty of holding a Ph.D. in a field related to the social sciences, which are saturated with their own Ph.D.s., this is overwhelmingly likely to have been what I would have faced:

Enrollments increased, at least for a time [as universities emphasized science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)], but the size of the faculty did not. When tenured professors retired, they were replaced by part-time and temporary teachers at wages that were often less than those in the fast-food industry. Now nearly 75 percent of the instruction at colleges and universities is in the hands of exploited and insecure, but highly trained and often devoted, faculty members who lack the time and resources to give students the attention they need.^[13]

This is why, for me, neoliberalism is personally unforgivable.

1. ^[1]Deb Erdley, “Pa. State System moves ahead with mergers of 6 universities, including California, Clarion, Edinboro,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 28, 2021, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/pa-moves-ahead-on-merger-of-6-universities-including-california-clarion-and-edinboro/; Lee Gardner, “A System Leader Sells His Vision for Remaking Public Higher Ed,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 21, 2021, https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-system-leader-sells-his-vision-for-remaking-public-higher-ed↩
2. ^[2]David Benfell, “The ideology of ‘competition’ and higher education,” Not Housebroken, April 28, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/04/22/the-ideology-of-competition-and-higher-education/↩
3. ^[3]Bill Schackner, “Petitions couldn’t save a popular Pennsylvania state university music professor’s job, so his wife is speaking out,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 4, 2021, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2021/06/04/State-System-of-Higher-Education-Greenstein-APSCUF-faculty-union-jobs-teaching-Pennsylvania-colleges/stories/202106040078↩
4. ^[4]Vivian Severn, quoted in Bill Schackner, “Petitions couldn’t save a popular Pennsylvania state university music professor’s job, so his wife is speaking out,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 4, 2021, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2021/06/04/State-System-of-Higher-Education-Greenstein-APSCUF-faculty-union-jobs-teaching-Pennsylvania-colleges/stories/202106040078↩
5. ^[5]Deb Erdley, “Pa. State System moves ahead with mergers of 6 universities, including California, Clarion, Edinboro,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 28, 2021, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/pa-moves-ahead-on-merger-of-6-universities-including-california-clarion-and-edinboro/; Lee Gardner, “A System Leader Sells His Vision for Remaking Public Higher Ed,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 21, 2021, https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-system-leader-sells-his-vision-for-remaking-public-higher-ed; Bill Schackner, “Petitions couldn’t save a popular Pennsylvania state university music professor’s job, so his wife is speaking out,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 4, 2021, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2021/06/04/State-System-of-Higher-Education-Greenstein-APSCUF-faculty-union-jobs-teaching-Pennsylvania-colleges/stories/202106040078↩
6. ^[6]David Benfell, “Education for robots,” Not Housebroken, August 30, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/2016/08/30/education-for-robots/↩
7. ^[7]Bill Schackner, “Petitions couldn’t save a popular Pennsylvania state university music professor’s job, so his wife is speaking out,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 4, 2021, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2021/06/04/State-System-of-Higher-Education-Greenstein-APSCUF-faculty-union-jobs-teaching-Pennsylvania-colleges/stories/202106040078↩
8. ^[8]David Benfell, “We ‘need to know how it works,’” Not Housebroken, March 19, 2012, https://disunitedstates.org/2012/03/19/we-need-to-know-how-it-works/; David Benfell, “Factory farmed humans,” Not Housebroken, May 17, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/05/17/factory-farmed-humans/; David Benfell, “About that alleged ‘labor shortage,’” Not Housebroken, June 4, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/05/09/about-that-alleged-labor-shortage/; David Benfell, “A piper needs paying,” Not Housebroken, June 4, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/12/19/a-piper-needs-paying/↩
9. ^[9]Ellen Schrecker, “The 50-Year War on Higher Education,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 14, 2022, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-50-year-war-on-higher-education↩
10. ^[10]Ellen Schrecker, “The 50-Year War on Higher Education,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 14, 2022, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-50-year-war-on-higher-education↩
11. ^[11]David Benfell, “‘Private benefit’ versus ‘public good,’” Not Housebroken, June 7, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/06/07/private-benefit-versus-public-good/↩
12. ^[12]David Benfell, “A dark cloud: Bleaker times to come,” Not Housebroken, May 8, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/2015/05/08/a-dark-cloud-bleaker-times-to-come/; David Benfell, “Walking off a cliff,” Not Housebroken, November 27, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/2015/11/27/walking-off-a-cliff/↩
13. ^[13]Ellen Schrecker, “The 50-Year War on Higher Education,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 14, 2022, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-50-year-war-on-higher-education↩